Hydrofoil boards (i.e., a hydrofoil attached to a watersports board) are becoming increasingly popular for watersports. The most common applications for hydrofoil boards are currently kitesurfing (also referred to as kiteboarding), windsurfing, and standup paddleboarding (“SUP”). Hydrofoil boards can be more attractive to watersport athletes than watersports boards alone (e.g., traditional SUP boards, surfboards, and windsurfing/kitesurfing boards) because they offer reduced drag and permit riders to achieve higher speeds and angles-of-attack upwind. Hydrofoil boards allow athletes to participate in water-based windsports with less wind, use smaller kites and sails, and travel farther and faster. Such boards have become popular on racing circuits, and could potentially displace traditional boards.
Though recent advances in technology have improved the performance of hydrofoil boards in watersports, existing hydrofoil designs often contain sharp and hard edges and are relatively heavy, expensive, and difficult to repair. Sharp and hard edges are a danger to riders because they can cause lacerations or other physical injury to the rider. This problem is compounded by the fact that many watersports that use a hydrofoil board also involve frequent crashes into the water. Heavy hydrofoil designs make transporting the board more difficult, increase the difficulty of learning to use the hydrofoil board, and reduce performance. Finally, existing designs involve integral components that make repair and replacement expensive and difficult. For example, damage to a single component of hydrofoils currently on the market often requires total replacement of the component or even replacement of the entire hydrofoil. Accordingly, there exists a need for improved hydrofoil assemblies.
FIGS. 1A-1D are cross-sectional end views of different prior-art designs for a hydrofoil mast (labeled individually as 10a-d), each having a hydrodynamic profile with a leading edge 18 and a trailing edge 16. Mast 10a (FIG. 1A) is formed of a single piece of composite material molded into the desired shape of the mast. Unlike masts 10b-d, mast 10a does not contain any hollow regions. Using a composite material is beneficial because composite materials have high strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios. However, current methods for manufacturing composite materials with hollow sections are complex and expensive. Thus, current composite designs either employ a solid design and do not include hollow regions to reduce weight, or require complicated and expensive manufacturing techniques to form a single hollow region (e.g., closed-mold tooling). Masts 10b-d (FIGS. 1B-1D) are made of a single piece of extruded aluminum and thus avoid the aforementioned design constraints of composite materials. For example, masts 10b-d include various hollow regions 17 which reduce the weight of the respective mast (as compared to a solid piece of aluminum having the same cross-sectional area). To compensate for the loss of structural support created by the hollow regions 17, masts 10b-d are extruded to include spars 11 and/or rounded support sections 13 spanning or extending into one or more of the hollow regions 17. For example, FIG. 1B shows an extruded aluminum design including a single support spar 11 and two hollow regions 17. FIG. 1C shows an extruded aluminum design including first and second rounded support sections 13a and 13b and first and second spars 11a and 11b. FIG. 1D shows an extruded aluminum design including first and second rounded support sections 13a and 13b. 